keyboard

We recently bought a HP dv7t laptop, and it has been very good to us so far. However, we quickly found a small problem with the way the function keys work on this laptop. In order to press F1, you have to press both the ‘fn’ key at the bottom of your keyboard AND the F1 key (the same goes for all other function keys). Being a development workstation, function keys are crazy-important, and we find it odd that HP ships a laptop focused at the enterprise with this default behavior. Thankfully, after rooting around for a while, we found the method for disabling this behavior and enabling the behavior that has been custom since function keys were first invented. Here are the steps if anyone else is having problems with this ‘feature’:

Reboot your machine.

At the HP loading screen, press ESC to enter the BIOS setup.

Press F10 (just F10, not fn+F10…) to enter BIOS setup

Right-arrow over to System Configuration

Down-arrow to ‘Action Keys Mode’

Press enter, then select Disabled

Press F10 to save and exit.

Compute as you see fit!

While we can see the value of ‘action keys’ at laptops directed solely at consumers, it seems like the default function key behavior should remain the default.